Response to Grand Jury Case No. Gj 07-11*

The Clean Tahoe Board of Directors, hereinafter "the Respondent", agrees with the finding. South Tahoe Refuse is capable and willing to assume the operations of the Clean Tahoe Program if asked by the City and County to do so. However, it has been reluctant to initiate this change because it does not wish to appear hostile to the Clean Tahoe Program. Response to

The Respondent has no comment. 4. During 2003, STR was provided a copy of the FY 2002/03 Clean Tahoe Budget and asked to review the budget for opportunities for cost savings if STR were operating the Clean Tahoe Program. After doing a line-by-line assessment of each cost item, STR estimated that it could reduce the annual cost by $49,720. Details of this assessment are shown in a spreadsheet that is Exhibit A. South Tahoe Refuse management expressed to the Grand Jury that it believes this estimate is still reasonable. Elimination of the Clean Tahoe Program's management and overhead costs is an important area of savings if STR assumes operations of the Clean Tahoe Program, but these costs are not included in the previous study that resulted in Exhibit A. Work now being carried out by two field assistants of the Clean Tahoe Program would continue to be required at STR. The additional net payroll savings were estimated by the Grand Jury as follows: $112,000 Elimination of Clean Tahoe's full payroll budget for 2006-2007: Less full payroll of two field assistants at STR costs: (71,480) $40,520 Estimated Net Payroll Cost Savings: The total estimated savings expected from transferring the Clean Tahoe Program duties to STR are obtained by adding the former estimate of $49,720 to the net payroll cost estimate of $40,520. This yields an estimated total annual cost savings of $90,240. It is important to recognize that these are recurring savings. The present value of these savings aggregated over the next 10 years can be calculated by discounting the savings each year at 5 percent. This is the County Treasurer's Pool Rate that is used for project loans that have been approved by the County Board of Supervisors. The calculated savings is a present value over 10 years of $698,806. The actual savings will depend on details of any agreement between the service-provider selected to take over the Clean Tahoe Program. Nevertheless, the estimated potential savings are significant and lead to the following Grand Jury